Xtreme Power

About

Hello, my name is Damon Carlstrom. I am a designer, developer, problem solver, innovation enthusiast, animator, and self-made superhero currently living in Denver, CO, USA.

Over the last 8 years, I have had the privilege of working alongside many talented individuals at major companies such as Halliburton and Hilton Worldwide, both remotely and in-office.

I now work at Panasonic USA as the Senior Manager of Product Design and User Experience for the Cirrus/V2X project, in Denver, Colorado. Since its introduction in 2018, our Cirrus by Panasonic V2X platform has been embraced by a growing number of transportation agencies and, building upon more than six decades of automotive expertise, is recognized as the most innovative and trusted V2X mobility system in North America.

My role within the team is to lead a small team of designers, building product solutions that solve actual user and business pain points. We do this by working closely with Product Owners, Engineers, Researchers, and Data Scientists using data-driven rationale, user-centered design methodologies, and egoless collaboration. We also leverage Agile methodologies in a Scrum framework.

I consider myself a life-long learner who enjoys the creative process as much as the final product. I prefer to work in an environment that encourages growth and fresh ideas. Always up for a challenge – I just like creating innovative solutions and having fun doing it.

Web Design / Development

Whether as an Interactive Designer or Front-End Developer, I have been a hybrid of both disciplines for 4 years. I am very comfortable using responsive layouts/frameworks (such as Bootstrap or Foundation) , HTML5, and CSS3. Jquery is the library I am most familiar with and cannot write plain ol’ Javascript. I am fairly comfortable working around PHP, ASP.NET, and React.

I have spent some time recently practicing with and learning about React. I am definitely interested in continuing to learn about how to best leverage this or other front-end frameworks when building UIs.

2D / 3D Animation & Compositing

I began with 2D motion graphics for web or video (Flash & After Effects) about 4 years ago. As the web evolved, I moved over to using more mobile-friendly solutions instead of Flash, such as Edge Animate or just web animations with CSS3, jQuery and SVGs.

About 3 years ago I dove into actual 3D modeling, animations, and compositing (still-image and video), using Cinema4D alongside either Photoshop or After Effects. I don’t spend a great deal of time doing 3D or motion graphics compared to the other areas, but would consider myself moderately skilled.